Hammer World Editor – To Those Who Carve…
Carving, simply put is something that can be done in Hammer, which involved literally carving one block (or brush) through another block (or brush). So you start off with a solid brush, then you end up with a brush with another shape carved out of it. This can cause a serious untold level of damage to a map, especially when compiling and on performance of the map.
If you are thinking of using the carve tool for any reason, let me put it this way. Don’t. Use the slice tool and vertex edit tool instead, these two will be able to create any shape in a much better way than carving could ever do.
In short, if you are thinking about mapping and think you may use this carve tool, understand this. I and every other mapper worth his Hammer will come over to your home and torture you to death. You may be thinking this is a joke, but it’s happened before and I assure you, it will probably happen again. (Why, why did Valve put the carve tool in Hammer!!! WHY!!!)
Subject Omega – Inventing Gameplay
Something that I always knew to be a challenge from the outset of Subject Omega, would be introducing new gameplay ideas. I didn’t want to simply recycle what had already been done in Portal, since all the major ways to use portals has been pretty much already covered. I needed some new techniques that the player would need to use in order to solve the puzzles, there would be no point in making a mod where I simply repeat the existing gameplay of Portal.
I always loved the early stages of Portal, where you only had control of one portal and the other one was in a fixed position. I realised that these puzzles could be made very challenging if the concept of a single fixed portal was used more extensively. That’s why the entire first part and some of the second part revolves entirely around puzzles with a single fixed portal. It also became apparent to me that depending on the orientation of the fixed portal dictated what that portal could be used for. For example, a fling can’t be used with a portal on a wall as momentum can’t be conserved. Combining these two concept together led to the following idea:
Have a way that the player can control whether the fixed portal was on the floor or on a wall. Then have the need to change the orientation of this to complete the puzzle. I won’t go into to much detail or it will spoil the puzzle too much.
Other ideas for gameplay is the idea of the portal ledge. Have you ever stepped through a portal, just by a little bit so you are on the exit portal, but are hovering in mid-air? This invisible ledge, means you can actually grab items and even fire portals, this concept is introduced in the very first map, just to try and accustom the player to having to use this technique as it has been used in less obvious context later in the game.
Also, just to wrap this article up, Subject Omega may be accessed as a regular game or mod. Meaning I have a lot more options open to me as I can now edit code previously unavailable to me. This allows me to pretty much do anything I want, only restricted by the engine and my lack of programming knowledge.
It Isn’t Easy Being Green Atheist
This does a good job showing what I think agnostics are like. Being a secularist as well I want to see people start to make the move off the fence and start to say I am an atheist. According to a BBC survey, 40% of the UK are atheists, which is a rather large percentage of the population with the same belief or lack thereof. Why is it that when it comes to religion, the majority of people do not want to be offensive, yet with political views people like to be offensive and insult the opposition. Same with supporters of sports teams, students of different universities and even courses. It seems that when it comes down to religion, it is a no no, despite the fact it is still a belief, whether it is religion, belief in ideas of a political party, beliefs in ones own university etc.
Why is religion such a hot topic? Power. Pure and simple power. The power to influence peoples decisions, their beliefs and their actions, their day-to-day behaviour. It has the power to influence countries and the politics of those countries. Those with power, always want to keep that power and religion is probably the greatest power in this world. That is why secularity is so important. Prevent the influence religion has over the politics of a country, which they do in order to keep the power it has over the followers of the religion.
What has prompted this post? Well, as you may have known, the Warwick Atheist Society has recently won the Best New Society Award 07/08. Great news, though recently, due to a certain poster, we have now had that award unceremoniously stripped from us and the prize taken back. The poster in question can be seen below.
I can see and understand why this may be constituted as offensive, but to take such extreme action as to remove our award after all the hard work it seems simply unfair. It is an over-raction caused by the delicacy of the issue of religious beliefs. The union wants to separate itself as much as possible from any kind of view point, trying to equally represent them all. Sitting on all the fences as it we’re.
This poster was nothing more than an expression of an opinion, it’s aim was not to cause controversy, offend religions or to exclude those with religious beliefs. Proof by the fact that several religious followers came to the event and enjoyed it very much! The union seems to be exercising it’s power to control opinions, could be a conclusion made from this incident.
You should consider this a rather restrained opinion on the matter delivered by me. Heck I am the publicity officer for the Warwick Atheists next year, so I now have a horrid job of picking up the pieces if this issue isn’t resolved. To read a less restrained opinion on the matter, see what The Chronicler has to say on the issue. More on this later.
Casual Games are the Future
The casual gaming market has been rapidly expanding recently, the casual gaming market seems to be the segment of the market that everyone wants to be a part of now.
Gamers love casual games, firstly, they are usually very cheap thanks to the developers not spending millions on developing it. Next, they are usually highly addictive, a simple game-play mechanism can make the game really interesting to play whilst still giving a real challenge to the player. Re-playability is also a major factor of casual games, they have this tendancy to still be fun to play again and again. A casual game also has that jump in and go factor, there is a little bit of learning needed, but a lot less that what a major game would use.
Casual games also expand the potential gaming market, anyone can play a casual game, even your mum, because of how simple they are. Complex games have a real barrier blocking the non-gamer types because of how complicated they can be, compared to the casual games. Though casual games can be used as an introduction to those who never play games, which would lead to the market for complex games expanding. Gaming is going to be an even bigger thing in a few years, becoming one of the major media channels.
Casual games are a brilliant starting point for the bedroom programmer, or a fledgling studio to start at. Casual games only need a simple concept, which is then built on to produce a fully functioning game. There is no need to waste time and money trying to produce the best high-end 3D graphics, with as many features as you can possibly cram onto the DVD (or Blu-ray disk if you like). 2D graphics or simplistic 3D is now suddenly acceptable when looking at the casual gaming sector. There is also no real need for a story line in a casual game, all it needs to be is addictive and interesting enough to make the player feel they have justified paying that £2-10 on it.
Casual games are going to be the future and if you don’t believe me, then just give it a year, then come back to me and tell me I was wrong. You will probably find that very difficult to do.
We Interrupt Your Scheduled Programming…
Warwick Atheists Won Best New Society Award 07/08
That is all
The Slow Death of PC Gaming?
After a period of random browsing of the web, something slowly dawned upon me. The PC game is becoming an endangered species, with console games becoming rampant. I’m sure a lot of you will already know and will have already seen the impact that console gaming has had on the PC gaming market. There are many arguments for producing games for consoles over producing games for PC’s.
- Firstly, it is cheaper to produce for consoles, as a developer, you only need to worry about getting the game to work on one machine, instead of the huge variability home PC’s can take on. (Hardware is consistent)
- PC based game engines, such as Source actually come with the development tools to convert the game to a console version. With Source, it can turn your game into a XBox 360 format.
- Greater sales on consoles
- Crysis was supposed to be a PC exclusive, almost to show how that PC gaming is not dead, then why is there apparently a PS3 version of the game coming?
The customer benefits greatly from choosing the console over the PC for gaming
- Hardware is expensive, much much more expensive, whilst a console gamer will only be updating hardware once every 5 years or so, the PC gamer will need to do it almost every 18 months to keep playing new games to the full.
- A fuller choice of games for the consoles, PC games seem to be getting rarer and rarer.
- Console controls are more intuitive. Wii anyone?
- The PC games anyone would want are pretty much coming to consoles anyway, COD4 a spectacular game is pretty much the same on the PC as it is on the consoles.
So really, I ask you, will the console reign supreme?
No. No it won’t. There are quite a few reasons for me thinking this. There are going to be PC only games and more importantly, it is in the domain of PC do we see the majority of the modding community. It is much harder to mod a console game, actually it is neigh on high impossible considering that mods for PC games, especially modders favourites like the Source engine and the Unreal Engine, combined with all of the free game engines out there. Consoles are either becoming the centre of entertainment, such as the PS3 and 360 or are becoming more intuitive for new gamers, see the Wii. This means that the hardcore gamers will have to rely back onto the PC, keeping it alive.
FPS games are, well terrible when compared to PC FPS games. I played the Orange Box on both the 360 and PC and even though the console version was playable, compared to the PC. Some games are just designed to run better on PC’s than consoles. Look at Spore, that is going to be a PC exclusive, instead of trying to be multi-platform, there is going to be what I consider ‘watered-down’ versions of the game that will be found on the consoles and even phones. However, these will simply never be as good as the PC version of the game. PC games also seem to live longer than console ones, look at the online games especially, there are many many people still playing CS1.6, despite it’s age.
So what I say is this. If you are a hardcore PC fan, good, there are plenty more of out there and there will always be games and mods for it. Just be prepared to supplement your diet of PC gaming with an occasional spoonful of console gaming.
